Monday, June 11, 2007

Revolution in the workplace? Expectations of the millennial generation

By Nancy Jane Moore

The Marketplace Morning Report woke me up this morning with a report on what the "new millennial" generation (the one that came of more or less with the beginning of the 21st Century) expects out of the workplace.

The rap on this generation is that they're selfish, that they've been raised to expect praise for the most mundane of actions, that they expect their bosses to be grateful for their mere presence. Based on the new millennials I know, this description sounds way off, but maybe that's because most of the ones I know are either writers or martial artists -- two areas in which one must put out a lot of effort before getting even a modicum of reward.

But here's the part that woke me up: Cam Marston, author of the book Motivating the What's in It for Me Workforce, said in response to a question about what executives can do to motivate these people:

Define the job by the quality of the project or the quality of the product, not by how long they're there -- not measurable in hours-per-week.

Wow! That's exactly what I'd like to get from the workplace -- and I'm not only not a new millennial, I'm old enough to be the mother of a new millennial.